"Haven't we had a gay old time," said Roy, on the way home, "and ain't you glad I put you up to coming, Sam Ray?" And Sammy admitted that he was.
"Now, girls and boys," said Miss Ruth, on the next Wednesday afternoon, "I am going to take you on a long journey,—in fancy, I mean,—over the hills and plains and valleys, to the country of the Far West, with its rolling prairies and big fields of wheat and corn. You shall be set down in a green meadow, with a stream running through it, shallow and clear at this time of year, but a little later, when the September rains have filled it, rushing along full of deep, muddy water.
"Under a big oak in about the middle of the pasture you will find an old horse feeding. He is fat and sleepy looking, and has a kind face, and a white spot on his forehead. This is Old Star, Farmer Horton's family-horse. You may pat his neck and stroke his nose and feed him a cookie or a bit of gingerbread,—I am afraid the old fellow hasn't teeth enough left to chew an apple,—and then you may sit near him on the grass, and while I read aloud to you, fancy that he is talking, and, if you have plenty of imagination, you will get
THE STORY OF OLD STAR, TOLD BY HIMSELF.
"I hope nobody thinks I am turned out in this pasture because I am too old to work. Horses pass here every day drawing heavy loads, older by half a dozen years than I am, poor broken-down hacks too, most of them, while I—well, if it wasn't for a little stiffness in the joints and a giving out of wind, now and then, I can't see but what I'm as well able to travel as I ever was.
"The fact is, I never was put to hard work. There were always horses enough besides me on the place to do the farm work and the teaming—Tom and Jerry and the colt, you know; not Filly's colt: he died, poor thing, before he was a year old, of that disease with a long name that carried off so many horses all over the country: but a great shambling big-boned beast old master swapped a yoke of steers for, over to Skipton Mills. We called him Goliath, he was so tall: strong as an elephant, too: a powerful hand at a horse-rake and mowing-machine. Well, well, how time flies, to be sure! He's been dead and gone these five years, and Tom and Jerry, they were used up long ago—there's a deal of hard work to be done on a farm of this size, I can tell you; and as to Filly, she came to a sad end, for she got mired down in the low pasture, and had to be hauled out with ropes, poor critter, and died of the wet and the cold.
"Well, as I was saying, I never was put to hard work. I was born and raised on the place, and I do suppose—though I say it, who shouldn't—that I was an uncommon fine—looking colt, dark chestnut in color, and not a white hair on me except this spot in my forehead that gave me my name. When I was three months old, master made a present of me to his oldest boy on his sixteenth birthday, and every half-hour Master Fred could spare from his work, he used to spend in dressing down and feeding me and teaching me cunning tricks. I could take an apple or a lump of sugar from his pocket, walk down the slope behind the barn on two legs, with my forefeet on his shoulders, and shake hands, old master used to say, 'just like a Christian.'
"Master Fred set great store by me, as well he might. He's traveled hundreds of miles on my back over the prairies, and we've been out together many a dark night when he'd drop the lines on my neck and say, "Well, Star, go ahead if you know the way, for not one inch can I see before my nose." That was after he learned by experience that I knew better than he did where to go, and when to stop going. For he lost his temper and called me hard names one night, when I stopped short in the middle of the road and wouldn't budge an inch for voice or whip, with the wind blowing a gale, and the rain coming down in bucketsful. But when a flash of lightning showed the bridge before us clean washed away, and only a few feet between us and the steep bank of the river, Master Fred changed his tune. Afraid! not I; but I'm willing to own I was a little scared the day we got into the water down by Cook's Cove, for you see I was hitched to the buggy and the lines got tangled about my legs, and there were chunks of ice and lots of driftwood floating about, and the current sucking me down; but master had got to shore and stood on the bank calling, "This way, Star, this way!" and when I heard his voice I—well, I don't know how I managed to do it, but I turned square round and swam upstream with the buggy behind me, and got safe and sound to land. I've heard Master Fred say my back was covered with river-grass, and I trembled all over with the fright and the hard pull.
"But, dear me, all that happened long ago when master was courting old Tim Bunce's daughter Martha, down Stony Creek Road. How that girl did take to me! She used to say she knew the sound of my hoofs on the road, of a still night, when we were a mile away; and she'd say over a little rhyme she'd got hold of somehow:—